1. Field of Invention
The field of the currently claimed embodiments of this invention relates to systems and methods for detecting and tracking objects, and more particularly to systems and methods for detecting and tracking a curvilinear object in a three-dimensional space.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Many dexterous tasks involve the manipulation of deformable 3-dimensional (3D) curvilinear objects. Examples of such objects are sutures in surgery, catheters in interventional radiology and wires in maintenance tasks. Developing robotic assistance systems for such tasks requires the accurate localization and tracking of the curvilinear structures present in the scene. Contrary to the tracking of contours, which has been much addressed in the computer vision community [1]-[5], the tracking of purely curvilinear structures has received less attention. (The references cited in square brackets are listed at the end for convenience.) This is especially the case for open curves in a 3D setting. Related work in this area mainly comes from the medical imaging community, where vessels [6] or catheters [7], [8] need to be localized in angiographic images. In these cases, the displacements and deformations are constrained by the human anatomy. The free manipulation of an object such as a thread is, however, less constrained and larger deformations can occur. Moreover, as opposed to contours, purely curvilinear objects do not have any stable side and are usually more flexible. There thus remains a need for improved systems and methods for detecting and tracking curvilinear objects.